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I mean, it’s often, it’s common that I see someone that is like that woman who e-mailed the question, and like her mom, 80 years old and has a Kleenex next to the side of her eye, is that a warning sign to you?

Dr. Robert Latkany:
No, not a warning sign, but certainly I might left that out in the symptoms question you asked earlier. I think it’s certainly one of the top presenting symptoms with dry eyes is tearing or excessive tearing, and very often the patient says, “How can I have dry eyes if I am tearing all the time?” And those are reflex tears. Those are tears, for example, if you are cutting an onion, your eyes tear or emotional tearing when you are crying; those are different than your baseline tears.

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So if your eyes are irritated, stinging, burning, tired, what have you, as a reflex, your body and your eye causes tearing, but those aren’t tears that stick to your eyes as well as the other ones, and it could be a chronic problem. So once you’re dry and you cause an irritated surface, you’ll tear and it will fool sometimes a doctor and certainly the patient in not thinking that the patient has dry eye.

Todd:
Dr. Latkany, for those women who are listening right now that have a dry eye problem, you are the author of The Dry Eye Remedy. Tell them about your book.

Dr. Robert Latkany:
Sure, as I said, it’s the most common reason why someone presents to an eye doctor and very often, don’t get discouraged if your eye doctor does not address this or manage this properly. There are doctors that do treat dry eyes and welcome your presence in their office, and it’s a serious condition. It can cause serious unpleasant days for you, and my book goes over really basic understanding of the condition, how to manage it, and most of it is all conservative management. And it’ll give you a nice understanding of what you have, what you can do about it, who you need to see for it, and it really has been, it’s actually on Amazon.com and I think it remains to be one of the top books sold about eye-related disorders over the past two years.

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